War in North-West Pakistan

The War in North-West Pakistan was a spillover conflict of the Afghanistan War which occurred in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces of northwestern Pakistan. The Pakistani government, backed by the United States and United Kingdom, cracked down on militant groups which had been allowed to operate within its borders by previous governments, and these militant groups included both well-established groups such as al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (all of whom had been given sanctuary in Pakistan since the 1980s) and new groups such as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and the Islamic State, who sought to overthrow the Pakistani government and implement sharia law across the country.

The conflict began in 2004 when the Pakistan Army was sent to search for al-Qaeda fighters in the mountainous Waziristan region of northwestern Pakistan, leading to resistance at Wana. Clashes further erupted between the Pakistan Army and al-Qaeda-linked Central Asian militant groups from 2008 to 2010, and the foreign militants were joined by Pakistani Taliban veterans of the Afghanistan jihad, who established the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and other militant umbrella organizations such as Lashkar-e-Islam. The war depleted the country's manpower resources, leading to the national economy's steep decline. The war was marked by both unconventional guerrilla warfare and by terrorist attacks, including "Pakistan's 9/11" - the Islamabad Marriott Hotel bombing - and the 2014 Peshawar school massacre. Due to the success of Operation Zarb-e-Azb from 2014 to 2017, 96% of North Waziristan was cleared of all foreign and local militants, and, in the follow-up Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad from 2017 onwards, TTP cells were dismantled and suicide bombings were reduced by 90%. By July 2016, over 61,500 people had been killed during the war, over 67,000 injured, and over 3.44 million civilians displaced.